Thomas Hart Benton: A Picture of America in Its Entirety at Schoelkopf Gallery

Schoelkopf Gallery's Thomas Hart Benton exhibition, "A Picture of America in Its Entirety," closes today, October 16. It opened September 9 and is the gallery's first solo Benton show in New York in more than a decade.

The checklist spans 1925 to 1974, paintings and studies together. It begins with Chilmark Landscape (1925), a view from the Martha's Vineyard area, and runs through to a late Self-Portrait from 1974, so a visitor can follow roughly five decades of his work in one room.

Rural labor and everyday life are well represented: Edge of the Field (Cotton Pickers), dated 1943–61, Sugar Cane (1945), Spring (1944), Conversation (1952) and The Hymn Singer (c. 1950). The West appears in Trail Riders (c. 1964–65), The Desert (1956) and Wyoming Landscape (c. 1955–60). There is also a Study for "The Kentuckian" (1954) and a portrait of Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1961–62).

Benton painted farmland, workers and small-town scenes with muscular, rhythmic figures, and the title is apt: this selection moves from Southern fields to Western terrain to an island coast. Today is the final day to see it.